Xiu Xiu - What The Christ?

what's great about xiu xiu is that it's not shrouded in the same shit everyone else is wearing. they have a pretty distinctly original sound in my ears. (even though they have influences.)

revival sucks. i was keen on it for a bit and i'm not sure i can take it anymore... m.

http://www.tapefuzz.com/reviews/x/xiuxiu-knifeplay.shtml

the live show is much more engaging.

A fallacious argument! Discomfort does not explicitly denote substance, intangible or otherwise.

Sure, you could say “but I don’t -like- them, it’s not that I was frightened by them,” but you’ve got to admit that they’ve got a strange, raw power. I've heard someone describe it as making them feel ill-at-ease, like watching a car wreck for enjoyment. One of the virtues of “Knife Play” is that many people don’t know what to make of it on first listen. It’s a mesh of sound and rhythm, hinting at many genres but not quite resolvable as such.

There are plenty of records that frighten or stir unsavoury things in me in such a way that I deem them to be valuable - Black Heart Procession's 2 and BOC's Music Has The Right To Children spring immediately to mind. I agree with your assessment of 'Knife Play' as an uncommonly disarming record but I don't think it follows that this quality implicitly makes it good.

To be honest, my problem with it has everything to do with Jamie's vocals, which, try as I might, I find absolutely unlistenable. I suppose the rest of it - namely the arrangements and production - are quite good. I suspect I'd be digging on this way more if it were an instrumental alb, though...

Perhaps it'd be better for people who like to record to detail when/how/under what circumstances they listen to it rather than why they like it.

lyrics aren't that important. Anyway, this sounds interesting so i might check it out.

that is all.

What is Dave Matthews listening to?
Matthews tells us about Xiu Xiu, the experimental indie project of Californian singer-songwriter Jamie Stewart, who, Matthews says, Tim Reynolds turned him on to. “There’s something about it where you can’t put it down,” he says. “It’s like crazy person music, but it’s really slammin’ and it’s really beautiful. He’s a little bit precious maybe — and ‘a little bit’ may be understating it — but there’s something about it that I go back and I listen to it again, and I like it.”

Xiu Xiu - Name Your Reasons Why They Are So Bad And Hated

Yeah, I almost posted this on the DMB thread, actually.

Hey, DMB has a point - there's nothing worse than "crazy person music"... Give me some nice, well-adjusted 9-5 office job music. That's rock and roll.

I didn't know there was another plain-ol' Mark posting in those days.

They're covering Nina Simone!

(blugh)

This led to objections.

https://twitter.com/XiuXiuforLife/status/381120328027488256

basically this dude is the worst

stay classy dude:

hi
fuck you. you do not know FUCKING ANYTHING go rape your mailman you asshole

your mother hates your guts and wishes that you and your hog fed sister was dead. i hope that the new POPE fucks your heart out

http://i.imgur.com/ZY30h2W.png

^just in case some of it were to disappear

fuck that guy ('brad')

two dorks take on xiu xiu

fuck that guy ('brad')

Who are you? Jamie Stewart?

team xiu xiu

what a terrible team to be on

eh i will rep for a couple of dudes early albums, but his "shocking" "boundary pushing" thing is so ridiculous at this point

they are all dicks

who cares

yeah, guess it's one of those twitter beefs where you just have to walk away

Ten In The Swear Jar had a few cool songs. Xiu Xiu has...zero. He should've quit while he was ahead.

who cares

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, September 23, 2013 5:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think there should just be an automatic script to post this as the first response in every single ilx thread ever, with n/a's signature line intact

good idea

i like xiu xiu

don't actually care about the dumb twitter beef, but xiu xiu's production is so slept on. all the sampling sources, sound design, & everything are so detailed and creative, too bad it apparently gets overshadowed by his aesthetic. plenty of good songs too.

also he's a nice dude. i went to see a (free) show where they didn't play because some essential piece of gear broke, and he gave me & my gf a bunch of free vinyl.

i mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKWckRuz-gk

yeah, i like xiu xiu, too. i remember in college i wrote jamie an email and he wrote a nice email back. seemed like a cool guy.

i love the part at 8:15, creating a chord out of a kick drum via EQ only, i think about that all the time.

I like xiu xiu and I like "I hope the new POPE fucks your heart out"

bumped another thread but since there's a thousand Xiu Xiu threads here thought I would share again that this new record is REALLY out there, even for them. in terms of abrasiveness / non-songy / insane it's second only to Angel Guts as the most crazy proper Xiu Xiu album.

Yeah I hear you. It’s a shame that nobody seems to care about this guy anymore, consistently one of the most interesting artists working imo.

yeah it's such a drag, especially considering how prolific he is. he had that Chain Smoking Alcoholic solo album last year and like 6 of those Drugs albums. it is strange that people aren't interested anymore, I feel like the running themes of his work (abuse, sexual violence, depression, suicide, addiction, hopelessness) are even more relevant today than they were in the 00s.

Have you heard the new one? What do you make of it, if you have?

I just heard the Pumpkin Attack song on Spotify and really liked it. Haven’t heard the whole new album yet, looking forward to it.

His Chain Smoking Alcoholic noise album was really good and of course slept on.

ironically the song on the flexi disc that came with the LP is a pretty straightforward song in comparison

I have a reverse opinion, that he’s an amazing noise artist with a wider audience than his genre/music necessarily deserves, genre/economy-wise (tho all his concerts should always be vastly sold out)

Personally I preferred the Depeche Mode-via-avant garde descendent of the first two albums to anything that came after, until Red Guts and this new one, which reinvent the aesthetic of noise but with idk hard to describe but aggressively hi-fi production choices, which is neither better or worse, it just is, but it’s extremely relistenable— I cant judge Girl/Fruit or Red Guts on the same metric as Knife Play or A Promise

But I don’t know anybody who writes well about this band

new one sounding really good and super abrasive and fun

otm about it being extremely relistenable, it's definitely his most beguiling record. I haven't read along with the lyrics yet

I definitely think Xiu Xiu will always be wrongly-rated because there is far more going on here than people realize (including myself). I don't think his songs are about (abuse, sexual violence, depression, suicide, addiction, hopelessness) but are pretty much, across the board, about mental garble, about the dissociative response one experiences when faced with the difficult-to-bear. He's not singing about war itself, he's singing about the feeling of reading about the war, watching TV about the war. I don't find his music comforting because he's singing anything meaningful about anything so much as I deeply identify on a personal level with the mind-spewing-information-as-a-result-of-next-to-nothing feeling that his songs seem to attempt to capture

Pumpkin Attack sounds like industrial techno. Is this his dance music record?

xp maybe The Air Force is an outlier but that record deals with that stuff pretty directly - songs like Vulture Piano, PJ in the Streets, Buzz Saw, Save Me Save Me - but broadly I agree, something like Support Our Troops or I Luv Abortion, that's exactly it - unfiltered live wire trauma garble.

I definitely think Xiu Xiu will always be wrongly-rated because there is far more going on here than people realize (including myself). I don't think his songs are about (abuse, sexual violence, depression, suicide, addiction, hopelessness) but are pretty much, across the board, about mental garble, about the dissociative response one experiences when faced with the difficult-to-bear. He's not singing about war itself, he's singing about the feeling of reading about the war, watching TV about the war. I don't find his music comforting because he's singing anything meaningful about anything so much as I deeply identify on a personal level with the mind-spewing-information-as-a-result-of-next-to-nothing feeling that his songs seem to attempt to capture

very good post imo

ok this might be the best thing he's ever done

ok this might be the best thing he's ever done

― flappy bird, Friday, February 8, 2019 9:56 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I interviewed Jamie.. he's a sweetheart

I don't know anyone who writes well about this band

You want to talk about Weyes Blood, I want to talk about Girl with Basket Of Fruit

I mean it’s not easy tbh. xp

He should be one hundred times more popular than he is though.

touring with AJJ and Emperor X next year, joined by Jonathan Meiburg....this makes up for them cancelling their last tour. really stoked for that.

that time again...

new album of duets 'oh no' out march 26th

some exciting features on there!

shoulda gone with

xiu xiuets

I'm not surprised that Jamie Stewart has an impressive Rolodex by now but that is indeed a tasty lineup:

1. Sad Mezcalita (Sharon Van Etten)
2. I Cannot Resist (Deb Demure / Drab Majesty)
3. The Grifters (Haley Fohr / Circuits des Yeux )
4. Goodbye For Good (Greg Saunier / Deerhoof)
5. OH NO (Susanne Sachsse)
6. Rumpus Room (Angus Andrew / Liars)
7. Fuzz Gong Fight (Angela Seo / Xiu Xiu)
8. I Dream of Someone Else Entirely (Owen Pallett)
9. One Hundred Years (Chelsea Wolfe) [The Cure cover]
10. A Classic Screw (Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo)
11. It Bothers Me All the Time (Jonathan Meiburg / Shearwater)
12. Saint Dymphna (George Lewis Jr. / Twin Shadow)
13. Knock Out (Alice Bag)
14. A Bottle of Rum (Liz Harris / Grouper)
15. ANTS (Valerie Diaz)

One Hundred Years (Chelsea Wolfe) [The Cure cover]

oh hell yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yialek4fUUg

^^ the song w/ Grouper is good!

He's the greatest

I've seen him live a dozen times and I just wanna see him again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRPzFgUwodw

Every time my partner and I have tried to see him/them has been stymied, the show either didn't happen or was canceled (pre- and post-pandemic). :(

BRO that has happened to me too!! I've had tickets three or four times!

The one I was most annoyed about happened at a little venue here in DC--as the show was starting, the sound system's snake had gotten unplugged and the entire system had to be set up again. They couldn't effectively do sound check, the guy on the soundboard wouldn't stop playing the pre-show mix or communicate with the band at all to work it out. This shit lasts until there's fifteen minutes or so left before a hard out being enforced by the venue because a salsa dance party was scheduled immediately after the show. Jamie had the set list written on a paper plate, which he chucked into the audience saying, "If you catch this, tell us what you want to hear. Just...I recommend you don't start with your favorite song, because...then it's all downhill from there."

The little bit they played was awesome. Can't wait to see a full show some day.

Cursed! I'm sure I've posted this multiple times upthread, but the first time was an outdoor college show where Dirty Beaches played a noise set, but apparently some crucial loop pedal or sampler broke and Jamie couldn't/wouldn't play. We ran into him in the parking lot and he gave us a bunch of 7"s though!

OH NO sounding really good so far, his most accessible since Always maybe. title track reminds of some of the early records.

also he has very very sneakily become quite a skilled vocalist over the years huh?

guest appearance by the screaming toy ducks from vine on that shearwater collab

I can't remember the last time I've done this--or if I've ever done this--but wtf is with this p4k review of the new album?

It’s difficult to be a Xiu Xiu fan, mostly because it means you have to listen to so much Xiu Xiu music [...] Stewart has spent the last 20 years blazing an illegible path, musically and morally, between queer politics and shock-jock shtick, radical vulnerability and repugnant cruelty, good faith and bad taste. The music varies wildly in style—from punky folk and dreamy pop to experimental electronics and harsh noise, all teeming with global instruments—and quality, from the heart-filled zenith of “I Luv the Valley, OH!” to the heartless nadir of “I Luv Abortion.” For every song you’d defend with your last breath, there’s another you couldn’t defend with your first. Most perverse is when they blend into the likes of “Ale,” a gorgeous tune about telling an overweight woman playing GameCube to shut up.

and this is a GOOD review!

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/xiu-xiu-oh-no/

or rather, a positive one (7.0)... what Xiu Xiu song is anywhere close to "indefensible," and on what grounds?

I don't know about "indefensible" and it's been a long time since I listened to those early records, but there some very, very bleak songs and a few about the horrific violence of war that I can absolutely understand someone having a hard time sitting through.

so, the author of that piece lives in the town Jamie called home, and shat on every chance he got, for several years. said author also edits the local independent free weekly. I don't wanna do a lot of talking out of school but Jamie's hatred of the town was weird for the people t/here who love the place and were happy to have him here, who loved & continued to love his music. his hatred of the town was visceral though and these dynamics inform your hearing of his music going forward, if you happen to have a stake in the town.

Well that certainly makes the piece less mystifying!

xp "hard time to sit through," definitely, but we're not talking about Chicago

I hate ilxtown too and still live here.

Excited to hear this one. I lost track of this band, but fabulous muscles and dear god i hate myself are incredible albums.

La Foret was the last one I bought before losing track for many years, but I got reacquainted with his work a few years ago and now I think Forget is his best record. Looking forward to making time for the new one.

as far as indefensible things he's done go the first that comes to mind is the A Promise album cover

I haven’t heard anything from them since Fabulous Muscles but the features in here definitely piqued my interest. He has improved a lot as a vocalist since then, Simon otm.

I don’t think they’re indefensible but their odd mixing decisions makes almost every song I’ve heard lf them sound very angular. It’s not a pleasant listen most of the time, but I guess it’s a very conscious aesthetic choice.

Every time this thread gets bumped I think "There's a new Xiu Xiu album called What the Christ??!"

there probably will be one day

and now we truly enter hell

it takes a lot to scare me but I think this is managing it

tbf this does seem to be the third album in their "hell" series (following Angel Guts and Basket Of Fruit)

my fault for not really paying attention until now. extremely convincing evocation of the abyss

first three tracks of this sounded incredible, looking forward to digging in/feeling bad. thought _forget_ was a really strong xiu xiu pop record, but the noise records have been peaks over the last decade.

reading the below line from the album description earlier reminded me of fgti's v perceptive comments upthread:

"Xiu Xiu has spent twenty years grappling with how to process, to be empathetic towards, to disobey and to reorganize horror;"

this really is some of the worst music ever made, I recoil viscerally from his entire aesthetic

my fave Xiu Xiu memory is watching an interminable, excruciating opening set for Swans and at a particularly self-indulgent faux-agony moment someone yelled out "it's OK dude! it's gonna be all right!"

Every time this thread gets bumped I think "There's a new Xiu Xiu album called What the Christ??!"

― Mark E. Smith died this year. Or, maybe last year. (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 30 March 2021 12:54 (two years ago)

*Twin Peaks itishappeningagain.gif*

Also lol sleeve, for some reason people shitting on Xiu Xiu is very amusing to me (I say this as a fan). There is just something so appropriate, so cosmically and karmically right, about people hating this weird funny music.

Truly one of the great troll bands of our time (not just in the sense of doing inflammatory things, but "This guy has probably gotten banned from Something Awful and/or paid to have someone else banned")